The domestic carbon fiber industry has reached a milestone breakthrough. In July 2026, the 'Key Technology and Industrialization of Wet-Process High-Performance Carbon Fiber' project, jointly completed by Zhongji Technology, Donghua University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and two other units, passed the appraisal organized by the China National Textile and Apparel Council. The conclusion states that the overall technology has reached an internationally leading level.
Technical Breakthrough
Wet spinning is a traditional process for carbon fiber production, but it has long suffered from structural defects inside the fiber when speed increases, leading to unstable product performance and difficulty meeting high-end application requirements. The project team established a complete wet-process high-performance carbon fiber preparation technology system, with the core being precise control of PAN precursor grain size. By balancing nano-defects and microcrystal sizes, they effectively suppressed the common skin-core structure of carbon fibers, resulting in a leap in both strength and modulus—tensile strength reaching 6,600 MPa and tensile modulus reaching 335 GPa.
This means domestic carbon fiber can now compete directly with top international products in mechanical properties. For buyers, this significantly lowers the technical barrier for domestic substitution in applications with extremely demanding material requirements, such as aerospace structural components and spacecraft parts.
Equipment and Capacity Deployment
Beyond process innovation, the project also achieved key innovations in equipment. The team designed a large-channel external heating pre-oxidation furnace and a multi-zone integrated carbonization furnace, solving stability and energy consumption issues during long-term operation. This design not only reduces unit energy consumption but also provides a foundation for large-scale continuous production.
Currently, the project has established a stable production capacity of 5,000 tons per year of wet-process high-performance carbon fiber. This capacity scale will directly impact the domestic carbon fiber market structure—products that previously relied on imports now have a stable domestic source. The products have achieved large-scale application in high-end fields such as aviation and aerospace, indicating that the supply chain from raw materials to end-use applications is rapidly closing.
Full-Chain Self-Sufficiency
Another key value of the project lies in its intellectual property and standard system. The project has obtained 25 invention patents, 30 utility model patents, and participated in the formulation of one national standard. This shows that domestic carbon fiber has not only solved the 'whether it exists' problem but also built a moat in terms of 'how good it is' and 'whether it can be continuously iterated'.
From core processes to key equipment, from precursor preparation to carbonization heat treatment, and then to end-use application verification, full-chain self-sufficiency means the relevant industry will not be constrained by external technology blockades. For national core equipment strategic needs, the industrial significance of this achievement far exceeds the performance improvement of a single product.
Industrial Impact
The leap in carbon fiber performance and capacity release will directly transmit to downstream composite material processors. The domestication process in fields such as aviation-grade prepregs, aerospace structural components, high-end sporting goods, and even wind turbine blades will benefit. For the textile industry, although carbon fiber falls under the category of high-performance fibers, there are technical intersections between its spinning and heat treatment processes and conventional chemical fiber processes, and related process innovations may spill over to other high-performance fiber fields.